Critics Week rounds out Cannes line-ups

The last of the main and sidebar events to announce its line-up, Critics Week, offered the best odds for a feature of winning a gong, with six named in competition. Getting into that six was a less easy task, with 1250 features submitted to the sidebar.

1700 short titles were considered by organisers this year, which also makes for pretty slim odds of achieving selection.

As have others of the Cannes programmes this year, Critics Week has named a number of titles by filmmakers with previous selections in the festival, members of the “Cannes family” as organisers call them.

Jonas Carpignano, who’s been selected twice for Critics Week, has his feature A Ciambra named in the Directors’ Fortnight line-up this year.

The Critics Week jury president will be the Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, whose Aquarius played in Cannes’ official competition last year, and was the subject of a strong (and eventually successful) campaign to prevent it becoming the country’s foreign language Oscar submission.

Critics Week’s opening film this year is by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza, who won a Critics Week gong in 2013 with Salvo. Carlos Conceiçao, whose short Boa Noite Cinderela played Critics Week in 2014, is selected with another short Coelho Mau (Bad Bunny).

Also among the films with previous Cannes connections is Atsuko Hirayanagi’s Oh Lucy!. Her short of the same name, from which the feature is developed, was the runner-up for the Cannes Cinéfondation award in 2014 and winner of over 20 awards on the festival circuit in the following year. Oh Lucy! also has another Cannes connection. In 1997 actor Yakusho Kôji was in The Eel, which won Cannes’ Palme d’Or.